Asher Bingham’s hand guides a fine-tip black marker around a sheet of thick white paper, creating lines and dots that eventually form a house with foliage in front.
This is just one of the more than 1,000 destroyed homes Bingham has been asked to draw since posting on Instagram two days after the Palisades and Eaton Fires began.
Asher Bingham’s coffee table is covered with drawings of homes destroyed by the wildfires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades. Photo by Megan Jamerson/KCRW.
Bingham says when she learned that a friend’s house burned down in the Eaton Fire, she didn’t know what to say that could be helpful, so she picked up her pen and drew the home as a gift.
Soon the list of friends who lost homes grew. Bingham realized she couldn’t afford to donate to all of their GoFundMe’s, so she put out a call online asking people to send her pictures of their homes, and she would create a keepsake for free.
She thought if she heard from 20 people it would be “really cool to share these gifts with people,” she recalls.
“It's such a small thing that I can do, [to] give them one hour of my time,” says Bingham, who works from the tiny pantry she converted into a studio in her Atwater Village home.
Photos started pouring in from strangers. There were ranch homes and apartments in Altadena. Beach bungalows and mansions in Pacific Palisades. A van on Pacific Coast Highway.
Many requests came with stories, which Bingham keeps track of on a spreadsheet. There’s the dad who ran out of his home in flip flops, and doesn’t have a photo of his home — Bingham will draw it from Google Maps Streetview. Partners who bought their first house together in March. And the woman who was giving birth to a baby while the house burned.
To keep up with the demand, Bingham recruited a team of eight artists from across the country to help her draw homes, and 50 more are ready to jump in as needed. Behind the scenes, Bingham’s friends manage the emails. And as her social posts racked up views, strangers on Instagram want to donate art supplies.
“I think I accidentally started a nonprofit,” Bingham says.
Bingham loves capturing the little details of each home, like the bucket of plastic flamingos one woman had on her porch. “It’s one of my favorites,” says Bingham.
Srimoyee Acharya’s Altadena home, as drawn by Asher Bingham. Image courtesy of Srimoyee Acharya.
The quirky specifics Bingham includes touch the hearts of those who receive the drawings.
Srimoyee Acharya and her husband bought their Altadena home in 2022, and lived there with their 2-year-old son and cat.
“It was our dream home,” she says.
When she received her drawing, she was immediately taken by the depiction of the property’s giant tree, and the solar panels on the roof that her husband installed.
In Acharya’s message to Bingham, she mentioned how much she adored the neighborhood’s dozen of loose peacocks that sometimes walked up to her windows and looked inside — a kind of “reverse zoo situation,” she says.
And sure enough, the drawing includes a peacock with a heart over its head. “Adding that little personal touch just really meant a lot to me,” says Acharya.
Fay Robles holds Bingham’s drawing of the Altadena home she lived in for 11 years. The house was lost to the Eaton Fire. Photo by Megan Jamerson/KCRW.
For Fay Robles, the details represent the life she lived in Altadena. Like her dog Snake’s tiny bowl that always sat in the yard, and the barbeques and table she used for hosting cookouts.
She rented the home for 11 years, and says when she looks at the drawing she sees “the whole community that I loved.”
Robles says she hasn’t been back to see the remains of her home, and that makes Bingham’s drawing even more precious.
“It sort of feels like [it’s] all I have right now of my home,” says Robles. “So it's something I'm going to treasure forever.”